


Clarity

by Black_Crystal_Dragon



Series: The Dead Speak [2]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Force Ghost Leia Organa, Force Ghost(s), Gen, Jedi Leia Organa, Missing Scene, POV Rey (Star Wars), Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Rey (Star Wars) is Nobody, Rey is Not a Palpatine, Spoilers, Star Wars: The Last Jedi References, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Fix-It, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Spoilers, The Force
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:20:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22020961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Black_Crystal_Dragon/pseuds/Black_Crystal_Dragon
Summary: After the final battle, Rey gets a visitor in the Resistance infirmary who clears up a few things.A fix-it of sorts. Spoilers for the whole ofThe Rise of Skywalker.
Relationships: Leia Organa & Rey
Series: The Dead Speak [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1604008
Comments: 2
Kudos: 51





	Clarity

**Author's Note:**

> I just wanted Rey to be a nobody.
> 
> Thank you to my lovely beta-reader [Ice_Elf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ice_Elf/pseuds/Ice_Elf). <3 Remaining mistakes are my own. Please do point them out (nicely) if you spot any.
> 
> EDIT: Re-watched The Rise Of Skywalker today (30/12/20) and realised this doesn't fit as well as I thought/hoped. I tweaked some dialogue to correct the biggest thing I misremembered from my first viewing, and it’s now as in-keeping with canon as I can possibly make it. Definitely an AU though. I can live with that, I hope you can too. :)

Rey’s dreams, when she finally lay down to let the medical droids assess her injuries and couldn’t keep her eyelids open, were filled with Force-lightning and the triangular shadows of Star Destroyers. The black stone of the Sith temple rose above her into a sky emptied of all light. She was trapped alone in the dark, with only the throaty chuckle of the Emperor for company. His gnarled hand closed on her shoulder –

– she started awake, breath fast and uneven, body locked in place.

She forced herself to take a deep breath. She was in the infirmary on Ajan Kloss. The lighting was dimmed to its night setting: low illumination around the base of the walls, turning the ceiling into a map of shadows. The hum and blip of medical droids and monitoring equipment was all around her. She was safe. She was with the Resistance. Her friends were close by. Even if he was still alive, the Emperor could not touch her here.

If only knowing that could ease the tight knot at the centre of her chest.

“Rey,” said a voice from her bedside. It was so familiar, so warm and alive, that for a moment her heart soared. When she turned her head, General Organa was standing there, but she was a figure composed only of light, blue-tinged and faintly glowing in the dark.

“Master,” Rey whispered. The grief she had felt amid the ruins of the Death Star rose like a sandstorm, tearing at her insides with shearing winds and a million abrasive particles.

“Don’t be afraid,” the General – the former General, the Princess, Leia – said gently.

“I’m not,” Rey said thickly. This was hardly her first experience speaking to a dead Jedi, after all. She sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bed.

“Not of me,” Leia replied, impatient. “Of yourself. I told you once never to be afraid of who you are.”

“You said that because I’m a Palpatine,” Rey said. She didn’t mean for it to be an accusation but that was how the words sounded when they came out of her mouth and she couldn’t find the will to take them back.

Leia’s expression hardened. “My brother,” she said, annoyance lacing her tone, “Told you what he thought you needed to hear. The thing is, Luke doesn’t always know what’s best for everyone.”

There was anger there, bitten back by years of hard practice. Was that Jedi training, or just the choice of a sister not to resent her brother, no matter how much she disagreed with what he’d done?

“What do you mean?” Rey asked, frowning.

“That things are a little more complicated than he made it sound,” Leia continued after a moment. Her voice was once again composed, whatever she felt hidden away below the surface, as she went on. “The Emperor did have a son. That much we know. What happened to him after the War is … unclear. Did he have a daughter who he sold into slavery on Jakku? Maybe. Or maybe some other orphan on some other planet carries the blood of the Emperor. Maybe Palpatine’s son took his family to a far-off moon to live out their lives in obscurity. Maybe he had no children at all. We don’t know.”

“But the Force,” Rey began, only to be interrupted.

“Doesn’t show us all the answers,” Leia told her. “You should know that by now.”

She did, from what she had experienced in the sea-cave on Ahch-To and since then, reaching for the rest of the Jedi only to be ignored until it was almost too late. However, the phantom weight of the Emperor between her shoulders, the wheezing of his breath in the back of her mind, wouldn’t be so easily dismissed. After all, she had seen an image of herself turned to darkness – a hooded figure fit for the Final Order’s vast black throne – and what was more, she’d felt the magnetic pull of that vision. When she’d first laid eyes on the high seat at the heart of the Sith temple, her first thought was of sitting there as Empress, draped all in black with legions at her command.

“But if I’m not, why would he say I’m his granddaughter?” she asked.

Leia’s lips twisted up into half a smile. “Why would he want to lay claim to one of the most Force-sensitive minds of your generation? I can’t imagine.”

Rey grinned briefly despite herself. She could hear the pride in Leia’s voice beneath the superficial layer of sarcasm.

“Look, I can’t pretend to know what went on in the mind of a twisted old man who should’ve died a long time ago,” Leia continued, “But here’s what I think. All along he wanted you and Ben together, so he could use your bond to rejuvenate himself. He asked Kylo Ren to kill you in exchange for his fleet, but he was inside his head: he knew Ben wouldn’t do it, and that he intended to bring you to Exegol to face him together.”

“Before Ben came, Palpatine said he could – possess me? If I struck him down,” Rey said with a shudder.

“And he opened your mind to it,” Leia reminded her. “He stalled, and then he gave you the option of saving the rest of the Resistance if you handed yourself over to him. You think he could have taken over your mind if you hadn’t let him in?”

It had felt like a very real possibility, down there in the dark, surrounded by Sith worshippers and with the Emperor looming before her. She stared down at the floor, reliving the horror of realising there was nothing she could do: if she struck, she’d lose herself and give the Emperor exactly what he wanted – and yet if she did nothing, the Resistance would be broken in the skies above Exegol and the Final Order would rise. He had sounded so sure when he offered her the ultimatum of sharing her mind with him to save her friends.

“I don’t know,” she murmured. “Maybe.”

“No.”

Leia spoke with such conviction that Rey looked up in surprise.

“The Force can be used to influence minds weaker or less trained than our own, but no Sith could control a Jedi like that unless they allowed it to happen. Not even a Sith Master.”

“He wouldn’t have a way in because I share his blood?” she asked before she could bite back the thought. Palpatine had made it sound as simple as that – but then, if Leia was right, maybe it was just another tactic in weakening her defences.

Leia shook her head. “He needed a vessel with Force-sensitivity whose mind was open, blood has nothing to do with it. I imagine he’d have offered the same ultimatum to Ben – or rather, to Kylo Ren – if he’d returned with news of your death.”

“I would have done it,” Rey admitted. All for an ultimately selfish impulse to save her friends and the childish belief that he would spare them, or that she could make him. A shock of hot tears spilled down her cheeks when she blinked. “I wanted to. Maybe that means I am his granddaughter after all.”

“You know, Luke once walked right into a trap because he couldn’t stand to see his friends in pain,” Leia reminded her.

“It’s not the same,” she said. “I was tempted, by the Dark Side.”

“And you think you’re the only one?” Leia asked. When Rey looked up, Leia’s perceptive gaze seemed to strip through her even more easily than it had in life. When eventually she spoke again, her voice was contemplative: no longer the decree of a Master, but the counsel of a friend. “Search your feelings. What do they tell you about who you are, now that Palpatine and his influence are gone?”

Rey closed her eyes and focused. She reached beyond the fear and dread left behind by the nightmare, the guilt over what she had almost done – searching for the place of calm within where she could best feel the Force. There. The steady ebb and flow of the universe was all around her. She could feel its currents as clearly as her own heartbeat. She relaxed into it and allowed her mind to clear.

“That’s it,” Leia murmured as she slipped into a meditative state.

The Force stretched out infinite directions. Through it, she could sense the movements of personnel in the base, the slow breathing of those who were finally catching some well-earned rest in their quarters, the wind rustling the jungle outside and the rapid scurry of night-time creatures. If she followed the connections she could reach further, up through the crews piloting ships in the atmosphere and beyond, skipping from planet to planet on a web of life-energy. The question she held in her mind thrummed through the links, asking, asking, but as the minutes passed even that quietened. The rasping shadow of the Emperor was banished and there was nothing in its place.

She drew back into herself, and the serenity and connection remained at her core when she opened her eyes. “I feel nothing,” she said. “Like when I asked about my parents.”

She had been terrified of that utter void once, standing drenched and shivering in the cave on Ahch-To, staring into her own face and knowing with a sense of finality that the only family she had was herself. Now, remembering that moment and feeling the same blank space in response to her question, settled the pounding of her heart.

Leia was smiling in the way she did when someone finally caught up. “And your memories?”

After she had taken down Palpatine, her parents’ fearful whispers of keeping her safe and the impossible recollection of watching Ochi kill them with the Sith blade had faded and taken on a dreamlike, nightmarish quality. The ship that had taken them away was blurred again by time and distance and the ignorance of childhood: she wasn’t sure how she had been so certain that it was Ochi’s ship when all she’d seen was the exterior, obscured by the flash of thrusters as it heaved itself out of Jakku’s atmosphere.

Yet there was a hefty weight to the memory of Unkar Plutt holding her back as she cried for her mother and father not to leave her in the dust of a barren world. That was real.

“The same as always,” she whispered.

Leia smiled. “It was always a possibility that you were Palpatine’s granddaughter, but that never frightened me. Who your parents are, who your grandfather might have been,” she paused and shook her head, the corner of her lips twisting further upwards, “None of that determines who you are, Rey. Your actions, your choices – those are what define the person you’ve become.”

She unclasped her hands and brought one close to Rey’s cheek. To her surprise, she could feel the hum of the Force just where Leia’s palm would once have touched. Then Leia’s hand dropped and she began to fade away, like starlight banished by the dawn.

“Be with me,” Rey breathed, desperate for her to stay, as more tears tracked down her face.

“We always are,” Leia promised as she disappeared.


End file.
